Leonardo Bistolfi (1859–1933): a 360° Study by Sandra Berresford

Bistolfi was the leading Symbolist sculptor in Italy from the turn of the twentieth century to the outbreak of the First World War. Alongside the Divisionist painter Giovanni Segantini, he was one of very few Italian artists to have secured a reputation in Europe. Apart from a certain interest in the European press, he was, for example, one of very few Italian sculptors to appear in The Studio. He also executed several important works in Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay.

Whereas Segantini’s fame was assured by his untimely death in 1899, Bistolfi lived long enough to see his reputation radically decline after the First World War until his death in 1933. It was not until the 1970s and the ‘rediscovery’ of Liberty (Art Nouveau) in Italy that his importance began to be acknowledged once more. Perhaps, too, we should also note that the funeral sculpture of this period is no longer regarded as inferior to public sculpture or that created for the private collector.

The 360° epithet of the title was chosen for two reasons: firstly because of his multifaceted profile: sculptor, exceptional draughtsman, graphic artist, furniture designer, painter, poet, art critic and promoter of the decorative arts, orator and politician. Secondly, because the generous donation made by Vanda Martelli (widow of Andrea Bistolfi, Leonardo’s grandson and heir) between 2021 and 2023 to the Museo Civico and Gipsoteca Bistolfi in Casale Monferrato, comprehended all aspects of the sculptor’s activities and allows us to give an ‘all round ‘view of many important works, from their commission, to conception, to installation and critical reception.

The donation made in two stages in 2021 and in 2023, covered not only his artwork (sculpture, painting, graphic art and drawings) but also his correspondence (over 3,500 incoming letters, and approximately 200 containing his sketches); his family documents and correspondence, his own writings and a precious collection of critical writings on his work (dating from the 1870s to c. 1990 and the death of his grandson); his library and various miscellaneous objects (from his beloved red fez to his chisels and palettes, even a collection of marionettes with the faces of his fellow artists). Amongst the collection of very fine drawings, his 35 annotated sketchbooks stand out, full of wonderful drawings and caricatures but also reflections on his life and art, poems and accounts relevant to the running of his ateliers. Documents belonging to the family have also helped, in part, to clarify the history of the donation, in the late 1950s, on the part of the banker Camillo Venesio to the Municipality of Casale Monferrato and the foundation of the Gipsoteca, based on this corpus of works. We are glad to take this opportunity to discuss the sculptor’s life and works in the light of the new documentation forthcoming from the collection and the archives.

Sandra Berresford studied at the University of East Anglia, the Courtauld Institute in London, the Università Internazionale dell’Arte in Florence and the Scuola Normale in Pisa. Her early studies in Italy were concentrated on the exhibition society In Arte Libertas in Rome (1886-1902) and the role of Giovanni Costa in spreading the ‘Pre-Raphaelite word’ amongst his fellow Italian artists. On moving to the Carrara area in the 1980s, she became interested in the marble art and craft industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in particular in relation to Britain and her Empire. She edited two volumes on the Carrara marble trade in 2007 and 2009. From the start of the 1980s she has devoted a large part of her studies to funeral sculpture, publishing  her commentary to the photographs of Robert Freidus and Robert Fichter in Italian Memorial Sculpture 1820-1940. A Legacy of Love, (London, 2004 ) in which the so-called ‘Poet of Death’, Leonardo Bistolfi, largely featured. She co-curated the commemorative exhibition organized in Bistolfi’s native town of Casale Monferrato in 1984. Subsequently she catalogued the important Collection left to Casale by the sculptor’s heirs (now  online), and in 2020  was nominated Honorary Curator of the Bistolfi Archives, housed in the Museo Civico-Gipsoteca Bistolfi in Casale Monferrato. The archives are now beginning to yield much new information, the first fruits of which, in 2024, saw the publication of  Leonardo Bistolfi Percorsi inediti dalla Gipsoteca di Casale Monferrato (Allemandi, Turin 2024). This will be followed, in March 2025, by the inauguration of the exhibition at Casale Monferrato examining the relationship between Bistolfi and the Divisionist painters Grubicy, Morbelli, Pellizza and Segantini (Catalogue De Ferrari, Genoa 2025).